


A Soft Epilogue

by TroubleIWant



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, MCD, Temporary Resurrection, angst with the happiest ending I could give it considering the premise, no seriously everyone who is mentioned in this fic is dead by the end of it, which can best be described as
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TroubleIWant/pseuds/TroubleIWant
Summary: People don’t die when they plan to, mostly. Everyone knows they’re going to, of course. In theory. But certainly it will come for them… later. Someday in the hazy future, once they’ve grown old and ready to face it. And there are people who die that way.But there are people for whom death comes sudden and violent, bursting out of the future to destroy the unsuspecting present. If you’re lucky, you have a moment to think well this is it, and make your peace. Or maybe you don’t even get that. You die surprised: a cruel and final interruption, cutting you off halfway through a breath.It happens to Derek on a Tuesday. He wakes up not knowing what day it is.





	A Soft Epilogue

Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.  
_Euripides (tr. Anne Carson)_

 

* * *

 

 

People don’t die when they plan to, mostly. Everyone knows they’re _going_ to, of course. In theory. But certainly it will come for them… later. Someday in the hazy future, once they’ve grown old and ready to face it. And there are people who die that way.

But there are people for whom death comes sudden and violent, bursting out of the future to destroy the unsuspecting present. If you’re lucky, you have a moment to think _well this is it,_ and make your peace. Or maybe you don’t even get that. You die surprised: a cruel and final interruption, cutting you off halfway through a breath.

It happens to Derek on a Tuesday.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up not knowing what day it is. Still Tuesday? His body feels distant and unsubstantial for a moment and then it feels oppressively real, heavy and aching. He groans, coughs at the dry scritch of his throat, opens his eyes to a blank ceiling. When he sits up, he finds Stiles standing at the foot of the bed with bright eyes and a wavery smile.

“Derek,” Stiles says, stepping forward only to jerk to an awkward stop. He wipes his hands on his jeans and gulps a couple breaths before laughing in a wild burst that he quickly stifles. His eyes rake over Derek’s face and body. He says, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Derek croaks, and Stiles’ face splits into a huge grin. Hesitation gone, he scrambles across the duvet into Derek’s arms and buries his face in the crook of Derek’s neck.

“God, Derek,” he moans, squeezing so tight it hurts. All Derek’s disorientation fades away; Stiles’ familiar shape and heat smothers any other thought. It seems eternal and right that they should be here, together again. Derek breathes in the soap-and-deodorant scent of Stiles’ skin, catching hints of pack smells and Lydia’s perfume. He’s home. Only...

“I don’t understand,” Derek says. ‘Didn’t I… die?” There’s the phantom pain of a Oni blade severing his spine, the memory of shoving Stiles out of the way and worrying for a second if he’d been fast enough to protect him, before he realized that he’d made a different error.

Stiles stiffens, and a tightness flickers across his expression that makes Derek want to take the question back. “Why do you think that?”

“I remember it,” Derek says, growing more sure. “That wasn’t a wound I could heal from. It should have killed me.”

“Yeah,” Stiles admits quietly. “I was hoping you'd just...but, yeah. It did.” A muscle in his jaw twitches.

Derek takes this in, along with the room. It smells like the Stilinski house, except he knows every room in that house, and this nondescript, too-tidy affair isn’t one of them. He sits back from Stiles enough to get a good look at him. “Where’s the pack? Scott?”

The tight flicker again. “I dunno. Around.”

“Around?”

Derek’s very familiar with the way Stiles’ eyes slide off to the left before he lies. “We can see them l-later, c’mon. Fuck, is it so bad to put off the big group love fest for a- a _day_ ? I want to spend some time just the two of us us, you know, after what happened. Don’t you? Is that some kind of _problem_?” He wrestles himself back under control, stares at Derek with an expression caught between confrontation and pleading. They sit in tense silence for a moment.

Derek’s eyes narrow. The strange room, he can accept. He can even accept that death might not be final. But the pack should be there, piling onto the bed and all talking over each other with joyful yelps and scenting and smiles. They should be making jokes by now, Stiles should be giving him elaborate instructions for his zombie Halloween costume. Instead, Stiles looks like he’s got thumbtacks under his tongue. _People don’t just come back from the dead,_ Derek thinks with a sinking realization. _Resurrection isn’t this easy._

Not telling the pack and going it alone, hiding the cost from everyone… It would be just like Stiles to charge ahead with a stupid plan, dangerous to himself or others or who knew what else, to save Derek. “Did you do something crazy to bring me back?” Derek gestures vaguely to his chest - his naked chest, he realizes. Whatever had happened, the clothes he was wearing hadn’t been part of the deal.

Stiles huffs with black amusement. “No, I didn’t.” Derek raises his eyebrows. “Seriously, Derek, it was dumb luck. It’s just this stupid…it’s this artifact Lydia and I found.” He carefully presents a small brass hourglass full of white sand, then sets it back on the dresser with a sour expression. “I didn’t flambé an infant or whatever you’re trying to suggest. Single use and all, but that’s the worst catch.”

Not technically a lie, but not the truth either. Derek can hear Stiles’ heartbeat racing. He hates it. They’re better than half-truths and lying by omission - or, he’d thought they were. The sting of Stiles’ distrust brings out the worst in him, as well. “Got it. Easy little thing, resurrection. And the pack, they definitely agreed to this, and that’s why none of them are even here.” Stiles at least has the grace to look guilty. “Don’t bullshit me. What did you do? What did this cost you?”

“Nothing!” Stiles paces next to the bed, hand tugging his hair. “Can’t you just… Why are you being such a dick right now? We’re supposed to be all happy and nice, and you’re fucking _here_ and I planned everything out so it would be perfect, and…and now it’s _ruined_. Lydia was right, this is making everything so much worse, and I never should have, I...” He bursts into shuddery tears.

It catches Derek off-guard. He’s never been any good with Stiles crying, partially because it’s a rare occurrence. Yet here’s Stiles in tears, because...what? Because Derek is alive again?

Derek’s eyes refocus, past Stiles, on the hourglass artifact. An hourglass. Fine white sand is bleeding from the top to bottom. It’s not quite enough to coat the base yet, but there’s not so much of it held in the glass, either. Single use, Stiles said.

Stiles sees Derek’s expression, and where he’s looking, and seems to collapse on himself; arms crossed tightly, eyes scrunching shut, shoulders curling in towards his stomach.

_It’s not resurrection,_ Derek thinks, _because it isn’t permanent._ The clock is ticking, and how much time left before he’s dead again, forever? Between the Oni killing him and now there’s nothing, the time elided without a hint of being gone. There’s not even darkness. Just an infinite gap between existing and not. And in some set period, some short set period, he’ll be _not_ again.

Whatever’s in his resurrected stomach, he has to fight to keep it down. Every nerve seems to be lit up with panic. “You were just going to _not tell me_?” he grits out.

Stiles chokes out a bitter laugh. “Uh, yeah? Duh? I didn’t want to make this some kind of shitty experiment in psychological torture. I just wanted…” he trails off, his expression going soft. “I wanted to see you again, and have this perfect, happy last day. An actual goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Derek echoes. He looks up at Stiles, who’s calmer now that the secret’s out, and wonders what kind of goodbye you say to love of your life when you think you’re saying another hello. Then again, what goodbye do you say knowing it’s forever?

Stiles starts talking fast, venting an uncontrolled stream of truth now that the dam’s broken. “With the way you died, I just, saying a proper goodbye’s gotta be better, right? I didn’t choose this without thinking. When Lydia and I found that artifact, I didn’t even believe it would actually work. Wouldn’t let myself. Lydia’s the one who did the research, figured out maybe it was real. She didn’t want anything to do with it, even for her grandma, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could actually see you again. Obviously I wondered if I should actually go through with it. I wanted to so bad, but I know better than that, now. To just dive in because it feels right. I knew how it could go wrong, Lydia and I just about talked it to death, I swear I had every single detail planned except that I just couldn’t… I fucked it all up just ‘cause I couldn’t act normal.” He scrubs a hand over his face, wiping snot and tears away.

_Lydia, Lydia._ Derek had tried so hard not to be jealous of her, it’s no good to start now. “Why didn’t you use it for your mom? For… I don’t know. Anyone.”

“I wanted to see you,” Stiles repeats, voice cracking. “I knew it would be awful, to lose you again, but…having the chance and then not doing it seemed worse. The only thing I couldn’t accept was how it would be for you, knowing...but then I thought if I just left out the catch, it would be fine.” His whole demeanor perks up, his face hopeful and desperate. “We could just be happy. Maybe you wouldn’t even remember what happened and we could, you know… be like it was. And Lydia didn’t think I should, but I explained and she said okay, so…”

“Why does Lydia need to okay it?” Derek interrupts, sharply. “What does Lydia have to do with you and me?”

Stiles’ eyes go wide, and eight excuses seem to fight to get out first. In the end none of them do.

“Wow,” Derek says. Lydia and Stiles adventuring together. Lydia’s perfume thick on Stiles’ skin. Lydia and Stiles discussing what to do about Derek. Waking here, in this anonymous room because, what? Because the loft he’d shared with Stiles has already been cleared out? Because Stiles has moved in with Lydia? The room’s not anonymous at all, Derek realizes. It’s Stiles’ old bedroom, cleaned up and redone the way he’d never let the Sheriff do while he lived with Derek.

“It just happened,” Stiles says down to the floor. “We didn’t mean to leap into anything, but... She was the only person who got it, how I felt with you gone, and we spent so much time together, and things just kind of...” He trails off helplessly.

Derek stands up to put some space between them, clutching the sheets to his waist. He wishes he had clothes. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to take that.”

“Can’t you ignore it?” Stiles runs his hands through his hair like he always does when he’s agitated, which Derek knows because Derek knows everything about him, studied everything, loved everything. “What’s going on with Lydia and me isn’t about you.”

“How the fuck is it not about me?” Derek spits. “We’re together, and now suddenly you’re with her, and that’s not my problem?”

Stiles’ face hardens. “No. Because you’re _dead_.”

“Except I’m not!” Derek roars. “I’m supposed to be, but instead I’m here. You did this, you brought me back. And for what? To get my blessing? I died for you! I gave my life, and how long did it take for you to fall into Lydia’s bed? You moved on like it was nothing! Like none of it meant anything! It’s always been her, anyways, hasn’t it? Middle school on up, it’s been perfect Lydia Martin. Glad to get out of the way, then. Have you even had a funeral yet, or…”

“Years ago!” Stiles screams in his face. “We buried you _years_ ago. I’d number the days out for you, except I can’t because I was so fucked up for the months after you died that I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping I sure as hell wasn’t keeping count! You think you’re some big hero, sacrificing yourself? Well, screw that. Screw you. I’d rather have just died. You hear me? You fucking coward, I wish you’d have just let it be me.”

“Stiles,” Derek starts, horrified.

“No, fuck you. You had the easy part. You didn’t have to live with yourself knowing I was dead because of you. That someone had loved you that much and now they were gone. You didn’t have to keep getting up every goddamn morning. I did. And everyone told me, oh, Derek would want you to keep going. Derek would want you to be happy, Derek would want you to enjoy ice cream again, Derek would understand that you’re moving on.” He breaks off to laugh, meanly. “Well, I guess not, huh? You just saved my life so you could have the easy way out, you don’t actually want me to keep living at all. You want me to be wrecked forever over you.”

“No, Stiles, I just...” He’d just died a moment ago, and he can’t wrap his mind around what he wants to have happened in the years it’s apparently been for everyone else, and Stiles is shaking his head, barely listening anyways.

“This was a mistake, Lydia was right,” he says. “I shouldn’t have ever used this fucking thing.” He snatches the hourglass up off the dresser.

“Stiles!” Derek says, panic thrumming in his veins. He stretches towards the artifact, too late, and...

 

...wakes on the floor of the same room, Stiles already in view, his face red and wet with crying.

“Oh thank fuck,” Stiles gasps. “Oh God, fuck, I thought... “ he sits back on his heels, sucking in huge breaths. “Okay, okay. Everything’s fine. It’ll work tomorrow, too.”

Derek barely gets out the breathy first syllable of “wait, no,” before the hourglass turns again and he…

 

...wakes up for the third time, in bed again. He jerks upright with a shout and Stiles is there, holding his arms to his sides, shushing him gently and murmuring words Derek can’t be bothered to parse.

He scrambles out of the embrace, putting as much distance between them as he can. They’re back in the guest room, in Stiles’ room, but how long has it been? He clutches the sheets he dragged off the bed, his naked back pressing against the cool walls of the corner farthest from Stiles.

“Hey, woah, you’re okay,” Stiles says, holding both hands out, palms facing front. As if he needs to prove to Derek he’s unarmed. Maybe, at this point, he does.

“I’m _not_ okay,” Derek snarls. “I'm not a toy you can put away when you're mad. I thought I was going to be dead forever, I thought you were killing me.”

Stiles sits and takes each of Derek’s accusations silently. Derek runs out of steam pretty quick, sits panting and frantic. He thinks, what else has slipped away in that last blink of an eye, what else has he missed? Dying is not supposed to be like this.

“Why bring me back again?” he finally asks Stiles. “Are you torturing me? Is this punishment for the things I said the first time? I’m sorry, okay. You two have my blessing, you moved on, that’s great. But don't ask me to come watch you be happy with someone else, or to pretend it doesn’t hurt. To me it was hours ago. Do you get that? Just… turn that goddamn thing back over, end this, let me go. It isn't being alive.”

“I'm not,” Stiles says quietly, his voice thick and croaky. “Torturing you, I mean. Not trying to. I just wanted…” His chin crumples and the scent of salt tears springs citrus-sharp in the air. He swallows and says, “I still wanted to say a proper goodbye.”

“Okay. Well.” The yawning impossibility of what will be enough soaks into Derek like cold water. All at once, he’s hit with every inch of regret and longing born of seeing Stiles again. Anger was so much easier. They stare at one another for a long time, neither knowing what to say.

“It’s just a few months, this time. Since before.” Stiles bites his lip and looks down at his hands. “And, just so you know, things ended with Lydia. So.”

“Okay,” Derek says. “I’m sorry.” He even almost means it.

Stiles shrugs. “It wasn’t about you, really. We’re still friends and everything.” He laughs suddenly, though it’s a sad sound. “You know, this isn't... I'm not in the right mood to make this a good send off. How are you doing? I mean, can we... Can we finish later? I won't wait long, just. Just if I could take a- a few days, so it's good?” His face tips up towards Derek again, hopeful and open. As if Derek’s ever been able to resist that, to say no.

“Yeah. Sure, it's fine, whatever you need.”

“Yeah?”

“How long?” Derek makes himself ask. “How long, total, do I have now, before I…before you can’t...” He waves his hand. _Before it’s over for good. Before I’m nothing again._

“Twenty-four hours. Or, you did. Twenty-three and thirty minutes, now, I guess? Give or take.”

Derek nods, accepting this information. He had thought it would be less.

Stiles takes up the hourglass, shooting a guilty look back, and Derek tries to keep his face impassive, show none of the icy terror he feels. He just barely sees the hourglass turn in Stiles’ hand before he...

 

...wakes up to see Stiles again, in different clothes, face no longer tear-streaked. They’re in a different room too, though some of the furniture is the same.

“Hi,” Derek croaks. Waking up isn’t any easier the fourth time around.

Stiles laughs a little and says “hi” back. His voice is warm, familiar but strange without any of their usual banter-bite. Before, he’d almost always had a teasing lilt, a hint of sarcasm or impatience. He’d only ever sounded this wistful right after sex, with the lights out, saying, “I love you.”

Derek swallows.

“Uh, here.” Stiles pats a pile of crisply folded clothes sitting at the foot of the bed.

Derek picks up the boxers on top, and double takes. “These are mine. You kept my clothes?”

“I mean, not, uh, specifically,” Stiles says, flushing. “The loft’s pretty much untouched. I moved back to my dad’s right…right afterwards. Just got this place and moved out a few months ago, actually.”

“But your room, where I woke up, that’s not where you were living.” He knows it’ll hurt to hear if it was with Lydia, but he wants the truth.

Stiles just looks confused. “Yeah, it is.”

Derek squints. “It was practically empty.”

“What? It was just clean!” Stiles says, offended. “I guess I got rid of some stuff, but…” Derek can see him sorting through his memories. “I dunno, having all that shit taped to the walls seemed childish.”

Derek considers that as he sorts through the pile and gets dressed. His jeans, his old leather jacket. It all smells musty with disuse, but he remembers the way the zipper catches a little halfway up his fly, and the exact wear patterns on the jacket’s cuffs.

“Thanks,” he says gruffly. He feels weirdly guilty, now, about leaving the everything to Stiles and Cora jointly. It had only made sense at the time, when his will was a fussy precaution. Now, the thought of a bereft Stiles having to negotiate with his sister over how best to dismantle the shed skin of their life together seems unreasonably cruel. The loft, at least, should have gone just to Stiles - but too late, now. For that and so many other things.

“So, what’s our plan for the day?” Derek forces a smile.

Stiles forces a smile back, one that looks as brittle as Derek’s feels. “Well, I thought we could grab some lunch, go up to the preserve, come back here and, uh, hang out. And then I have reservations for dinner at this really nice place that does the _best_ cheesecake, you get a slice free on your birthday. Oh, and it is. My birthday, I mean.”

“And you’re turning…” It feels awful to have to ask.

“Thirty,” Stiles supplies quickly. “Older than you, weirdly.”

“Weird,” Derek echos. He hadn’t had the chance to think of it like that, yet, of Stiles being older than he’ll ever be. Stiles’ future seems an almost physical presence, a wide road running smooth into a future they can’t share. Stiles will be middle-aged. Will get softer around the middle, will go grey and complain about teen fads. Stiles will see new technologies become commonplace, will know who’s elected president in 2020, will someday be old. Derek will only be dead.

He takes a deep breath and slaps his thighs as he stands. “Let’s get started, then.”

The Jeep is, impossibly, still kicking; Derek swallows a joke about who might have predicted the piece of junk outlasting him. The baby blue relic is terribly out of place in the newly-poured concrete garage of Stiles’ apartment complex. They drive out through what used to be a bad area of town, but has improved markedly since Derek died. It’s still not the best location, Stiles explains to Derek, half proud and half abashed, but it’s safe. And here, he can afford a nice, new one-bedroom to himself.

“Mm,” Derek hums encouragingly. Honestly, the new place’s freshly-painted cube-rooms with easy-to-clean flooring do nothing for him. Then again, Stiles’ tastes have always run more towards the modern than his own. Now there’s no need to compromise.

Derek has so many questions, but he isn’t sure which ones he actually wants answered. He settles for asking after Cora. She’s back in South America. Doing well, he’s glad to hear, though she and Stiles don’t keep in touch as much as they could. The conversation is prickly with things unsaid. Derek has the gutting thought that twenty-four hours might feel long enough like this.

As they’re passing Browning, though, Derek notices that the terrible Subway knockoff is still somehow in business, and repeats this fact incredulously to Stiles, who laughs so hard he almost swerves into a curb. He assures Derek that their favorite gyro shop remains a Beacon Hills feature, too, and that’s where they’re having lunch.

“You’re hungry right?” Stiles confirms, anxiety yawning under the question.

He’s not, really, but Derek doesn’t say so because he’s pretty sure it’s due to the whole “technically dead” issue they’re studiously avoiding. “Won’t they recognize me?” he asks instead.

Stiles scoffs. “We were regulars, sure, but Beacon Hills isn’t that small a town.”

Is it true, Derek wonders, that he made so little an impression during his time on earth? It feels like they spent half their lives here, lazy weekend lunches and rushed weekday dinners, and meals at odd hours after supernatural fights.

The shop has been repainted and there are new menu boards that Derek finds himself eyeing suspiciously as he and Stiles wait in line. The woman who takes their order, on the other hand, is perfectly familiar. She seems to double take when she sees him, though that might be his ego talking. He swears he can feel her eyes on his back as he and Stiles take their number to their usual table in the back.

Derek falls quiet as they sit, but Stiles keeps up the conversation on his own, fizzling with nervous energy. They’re holding hands on the table and he keeps running his thumb across Derek’s knuckles, over and over like a worry stone. Derek doesn’t complain.

He remembers teasing Stiles years ago (weeks ago) at this exact table, flatly repeating “nope” and “no” over and over to some silly thing Stiles was insisting on. Stiles got so wound up he went red in the face and almost knocked his milkshake off the table. Too easy, as always. Derek would never admit it, but he loved their bickering. 

“Here y’go!” the server interjects cheerily, expertly sliding their orders onto the table. She hesitates, looking at Derek. “You used to come here a lot, right? Been a little while since we’ve seen you guys.” She trails off, inviting an answer.

“Yeah,” Stiles snaps over Derek’s startled silence, flat and definitive. The server bobs her head deferentially, and returns to the counter with an abashed set to her shoulders. Derek winces, wondering what she thinks of them, but puts the worry aside. It’s not like he’s going to come back to face any consequence, and there’s no way he’s explaining the truth. 

He tries to eat, though he’s really not hungry. The crisp sound of shredded lettuce dropping onto his paper-lined tray seems loud in the silence that’s descended between them. Stiles works through his wrap with a single-minded focus that seems oddly desperate. After he finishes, he notices how much Derek’s left uneaten. He gives the food a long look, but says nothing. _Well, sure, would I get a takeaway box?_ Derek thinks bitterly. He tries to untangle himself from a cloying resentment that teeters on despair. He thinks it mostly works.

But as they leave the shop, Derek can’t avoid thinking that this is the last time he’ll ever go there. Ever have a gyro, even. Ever eat lunch at all. All the mundane lasts that this day will bring suddenly overwhelm him. And how will he manage the big lasts? The final goodbye with Stiles that they both know is coming?

“Hey,” Stiles says softly, taking his hand. “We have all of today, right through the night until tomorrow morning. We’ve got time.”

Derek looks at him, and it’s weirdly comforting to think that, in all the wide world, at least one other person understands what he’s feeling. He smiles, knocks their shoulders together, nods.

After that it’s easier to talk, and they drive up to the preserve caught up in conversation both pleasant and mundane. They talk about Stiles’ new job (different from the one he’d had before, but similar enough that Derek can understand the office politics), and the town (gentrifying but recognizable, though the sheriff not being the actual sheriff seems exceptionally strange to both of them). Scott and the pack appear in slivers at the edges of Stiles’ stories, which suits Derek fine. Best not to confront too clearly what he’s lost.

The unceasing ebb and flow of life in the preserve makes the forest seem the least changed out of everything Derek’s encountered since his death. It feels good to walk, get his blood pumping. He takes a deep breath of the fresh air, ripe with the same loam-and-pine scent that features in even his earliest memories of home. He feels more settled than he has since he first woke up. More real.

He’s never been much of a “smell the roses” guy, but today each plant and rock looks bright and perfectly formed, standing out in individual beauty. Stiles is beautiful, too: flushed from the hike, shirt sticking to his broad shoulders, amber eyes squinting against the rays of sun lancing between the trees. Derek feels a pulse of blood go straight to his dick. Even now, despite eveything, Stiles can still get him hard.

Derek smiles, grabs Stiles’ hand on impulse. He gets to have this, at least for one more day. Why ruin it with moping?

“I honestly can’t believe you suggested this,” Derek says with an amused shake of his head. Stiles always had to be dragged out into nature, before. “You hate hiking.”

“No,” Stiles protests, affronted. It feels painfully normal. “I always enjoy it! In the end,” he adds sullenly at Derek’s knowingly quirked eyebrows.

“So we’re going all the way up to the peak then, right?” Derek smirks. “Since you’ll enjoy it in the end.”

Stiles gives him a flat look. Derek laughs and starts up the trail.

Conversation trails off as the hike get steep and the mid-afternoon heat comes on thick. Derek reaches the peak first, his werewolf stamina having apparently survived whatever resurrection magic is in the hourglass. As always, the view down to the city takes his breath away. It looks like a tiny jeweled treasure down there, something you could hold in your hands and protect so easily.

Stiles joins him a moment later. He groans between huffing breaths, and slaps at his thighs. “Welp, gonna regret _this_ one, tomorrow.”

_Tomorrow,_ Derek thinks, the future a missed stair in the dark.

“I mean...” Stiles says thickly, the good humor draining from his tone.

“Yeah,” Derek says quickly. Then he lets the silence lie, hoping it will pass. It doesn’t. Finally he asks, “You ok?”

“Sure.” Stiles sighs, melancholy. And then catches himself to blurt, “God! Sorry, it’s fine, this is what I wanted. And I mean, you're the one who’s…”

_Dead_ . Derek’s shoulders twitch defensively, remembering Stiles screaming in his face just a few hours ago (weeks ago), _you fucking coward, I wish you’d have just let it be me._ “Don’t act like it’s nothing to you. This is hard for both of us.”

“Agreed,” Stiles says sourly, then sighs again. “It was impossible picking a day to be, like, _it_. The last. I knew you wanted it to be soon, but I kept pushing it off and thinking it might get easier. I’d pick a day, be fine with it, but then the second it got close I'd be all…” He waves at his face, illustrating with his tear-bright eyes and wobbling chin the emotions too deep to name. “And I’d push it off again. And here I am, I finally picked one and stuck with it and I’m still ruining it.” He puts both his hands over his face and scrubs, with a comical “arg!” offered as an apology for being melodramatic. “So! I just mean, don’t let me spoil our last day.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Derek offers on impulse.

“What?”

“Doesn’t have to be our last.” the idea of it catches him, a buoyant updraft of reckless possibility. “I mean, we already know the hourglass lets you bring me back whenever you want. Yeah, there’s a limit on how long but...what if we space this out? If we met every year on your birthday for about an hour each time, that gets you to about forty-nine, doesn’t it?”

The pure hope that flashes across Stiles’ face is buried a second later. “You don't have to,” he hedges. “We can stick to the plan. I mean, we have reservations tonight.” He grins, looking slightly off center of Derek’s eyes as if that’ll hide his desperation.

“Cancel ‘em,” Derek says. It’s always been easy to throw caution to the wind for Stiles.

Stiles smacks into his chest, tangling them into a fierce hug as Derek grabs him back just as tightly.

“I don't want it to be over either,” Derek mumbles into Stiles’ neck, and it’s true. Even if it's just a few stolen hours, he wants to be there for Stiles, as much as he can be.

Stiles takes the hourglass in his hands - he’d been wearing it around his neck - but he hesitates. “No, I can’t just end things here and wait for next year,” he says half to himself. “Hey, we can start the hour now, right? And still get to forty-eight, that’s like, almost two decades still.”

“Whatever you want,” Derek agrees. “Why don’t we go back into town? Back to your apartment.”

Stiles grins, nods. Trotting back to the jeep takes less than half as long as the hike up did, full as they are of barely contained anticipation. They get more, Derek keeps thinking, and the wonder of that never wears off. He’s not staring down a barrel for the first time since he realized what the hourglass’ bargain was. Yes, he only has the same handful of hours he had this whole time, but it’s easier to put that aside like this. It feels like cheating death, feels like escape.

Back at the apartment building, Derek watches Stiles’ hands shake a little on the keys to his front door. He feels antsy, too, unsure how to stand or where to put his hands. They go inside, and Derek takes a cursory glance around as if they might, what, watch a movie? A second later, they give up the pretense of what they’re here for. Stiles breaks first, grabbing Derek by the neck and kissing him, desperate. Derek feels like it’s been ages since they did this. What does it feel like for Stiles?

They stumble to the bedroom shedding clothes, Stiles stroking each new exposed section of Derek’s body with nearly worshipful moans. Derek’s not sure what to make of it, and decides to just enjoy being touched, being so uncomplicatedly loved. He won’t let himself overthink it and spoil the whole hour worrying like he always does. What’s the worst thing that could happen, after all? The worst already has.

They fuck with the same impatient passion as the first few times they slept together, before they put a name to anything, back when neither of them was sure it might not be their last shot. It’s rediscovery and familiarity all in one, rushed and still somehow too slow. They both come fast and hard, bright wide eyes locked on one another. Their chests heave just slightly out of time as they share a moment of pure, uncomplicated bliss.

“Ok, ok, we gotta save the rest.” Stiles rolls away towards the nightstand, his attention suddenly on his phone rather than on Derek. “It’s gotta be more than an hour already... yeah, I flipped it over at eleven, so… okay.” He makes a quick note of how much time they have left, and then beams back at Derek. The way he drinks in the sight with hope rather than the hooded dread from earlier in the day renders every choice Derek’s made worth it, from taking the Oni’s blade on forward.

“I’ll see you again,” Stiles says, and it’s a promise to them both. He leans down and kisses Derek hard, and this time Derek’s not even afraid. He closes his eyes as the hourglass turns and…

 

...opens them again in Stiles’ room, which looks fundamentally the same despite the detritus that’s migrated to different spots, and some new framed pictures on the wall. Stiles looks the same, too, despite the slightly shorter hair and the different shade of plaid on his shirt. A comforting constant: each time Derek wakes it’s to this beloved face.

“Stiles,” he says, happy to the point of giddiness despite how his throat, as always, scratches dry and his muscles feel like they’ve been recently tenderized. Some afterglow, he thinks, and then catches himself. These hours are infinitely less than they could have had, but he’s lucky to have extra time to say goodbye. Bittersweet as it is, he knows that nobody else gets even this much.

“Derek,” Stiles says back, his tone and face full of aching relief. Of course. For Stiles, being together like this is a rarity rather than a constant. In Derek’s memory it’s as if no time has passed, but it has for Stiles. It’s been a full year.

He pushes that out of his head and draws Stiles to him. Their kiss this time is gentle, trembling with want for more.

“You have no idea how much I wanted to cheat and do this early,” Stiles admits.

Derek laughs, and it feels like his whole chest loosens up. He pulls Stiles in for another kiss, simple and sweet.

_A full year,_ he thinks, and his brain can’t quite move on from the thought. So much can change in a year. He’s distracted for a moment. At Stiles’ questioning look, he winces. “It’s been a year, for you, since last time. Are you still…?”

Stiles smiles, rolls his eyes. “Of course I'm single, oh my God, are you kidding? And even if I weren’t...” His smile curdles a little, gaze skating to the side. “I mean, this is different, isn’t it? Nobody in their right might would say this is like, cheating.”

“You’re right,” Derek says, though he doesn’t believe it.

“Yeah,” Stiles confirms, equally casual.

They kiss again, but Derek can’t quite forget the first time he woke up, just a handful of hours ago. The feeling of realizing Stiles had moved on and loved someone else is so fresh, too easy to summon. He pulls away again, swallowing.

Stiles tries to lean in, and gives a little confused whine when Derek doesn’t let him.

“Just…maybe you’re single this time, but one day that will change. I mean, you aren’t going to stop dating until you’re fifty, are you? And you’re not actually the kind of person who could ignore that while you’re with me.”

Stiles opens his mouth, but it’s not really arguable. He wears his heart on his sleeve, for all he pretends otherwise.

Derek sits upright, glad for the sheets he can use to cover himself. “I want you to be happy and have a relationship with a person who’s fully, actually alive, somebody who can give you a family and everything you want. I do. But… I don't want to know, when it happens. And I don’t want you to have to chose.” He wets his lips, gets back under control. “Let’s spend the time we have doing something else.”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees after a moment, clearly disappointed. Then he shakes his head, as if to clear it, and looks back with a genuine smile. “No, that makes sense. That’s not what’s important to me, anyways. You know that, right? Just fucking an hour away, it’d be a waste of time. I wanna tell you what’s new!”

Derek listens to all of the little updates about Stiles’ life, and does his best to absorb the rapid-fire facts. Some of them are about people that he doesn’t know, conclusions to stories he never heard the start of. Derek keeps interrupting to ask, wait, who? What club is that? Is this about the same job as before, or…?

Stiles doesn’t take long to realize Derek isn’t really following along. It flusters him. “Sorry, this is super confusing, I shouldn't…”

“Shouldn't what, acknowledge that you’ve been living your life?” Derek asks, more shortly than he means to.

“No, just like… I don’t need to rub it in your face. All the stuff you’re missing.”

He’s hit the nail on the head, Derek thinks with a wry twist of a smile. As usual. “No. I mean, yes. I don’t like not having a life either, but I’m happy that you’re living yours fully. It’s what I want.” Derek almost convinces himself he doesn’t need to say more, but then he figures there’s no point in going to the grave with regrets when you have a second shot at addressing them. “Stiles, look. I want to apologize. I’d just come back, I wasn’t thinking straight and I was lashing out. You should know I didn't mean it about Lydia.”

“Lydia?” Stiles looks at him blankly for a second before his face suddenly animates with comprehension. “Oh! Lydia, shit, I’d forgotten that.”

Derek startles. “What?”

“No - I mean, obviously I remember dating her, jeeze! But like, the exact details about what you said about it? Kinda just got filed to worst day of my life bullshit memory hole. Being with Lydia was just this weird blip of post-Derek whatever. That argument when you first came back was over a year ago, you know. But... for you, it was just a few hours.” He looks at Derek strangely.

Derek knowns the feeling. He always catches himself forgetting that their lives are so out of sync, that so much has happened while he’s been gone. “It's hard to keep up,” he jokes  and he tries to smile. It’s not a very funny joke, and the expression probably comes out as a wince.

Stiles half-smiles back, understanding. “Ok, so we both know I’m living my life and moving on or whatever. But seriously, I shouldn’t yammer on about all these little things that don’t really matter. It’s just confusing. We should stick to the big stuff about how my life is going that you’ll get, because you get me.”

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, soothed by the ease with which Stiles assumes that, years separated, Derek still _gets_ him. “That sounds perfect. Just us.”

Stiles tries again, and this time he doesn’t give too many details, and Derek doesn’t ask too many questions. He smiles, nods, tries to accept that this is all he gets. And it works. He can enjoy just hanging out like nothing happened, casually touching each other while they talk. It’s good to banter and to give advice and it’s good to be with Stiles.

They stay in Stiles’ apartment the next time, too. Bumming around Stiles’ apartment is about the only thing they can do, really. They can’t go to their old haunts, both because Derek might be recognized again, and because Stiles preemptively nixes wasting their time driving.

Derek doesn’t resent the limitations of his returns, exactly. It’s better than no existence at all. They chit-chat and bump their ankles together and it hurts only in the best way.

But it all goes so quickly. Derek realizes that Stiles face is thinner the next year, and that he has a permanent fine line on his forehead that used to go away when he wasn’t quirking his eyebrows. The time they have slipping by, no matter the joy the two of them try and squeeze out of what they take. Sometimes, without meaning to, Derek catches himself watching the sand slide through the hourglass that’s always set aside nearby.

“Hey, can we try tilting it a little?” Stiles asks, on his thirty-fourth birthday.

“Sure,” Derek says. Why not? But when Stiles holds the hourglass at an angle time is suddenly stuttering forward like a video played over a bad connection, and Derek’s body feels sickeningly attenuated. He reaches out to right the thing with a queasy laugh. “Actually, please don't.”

So there’s no real way around it. They knew that already.

“Is it time, then?” Derek asks. By silent agreement, Stiles never shows him a record of how long they've spent, and he avoids looking for any clock.

“Yeah, it’s that time,” Stiles agrees tensely.

Derek nods. As always, there’s a swoop of fear before Stiles flips the artifact and he...

 

...opens his eyes. Waking up is always unpleasant, but there are advantages to skipping time, too. Derek never seems to get hungry, even though he hasn’t eaten a bite since the light lunch at the gyro shop hours ago (years ago), and he’s never tired, or thirsty. They try to pretend like nothing bad happened, to think of nothing that will spoil their precious and singular hour, but Stiles slips sometimes and says names Derek doesn't know, hums unfamiliar songs, uses slang that wasn’t invented when Derek was buried. He's older than Derek will ever be, their original age gap more than flipped.

Stiles seems calm with what they have, on the surface. But is he, really? What does he do when Derek disappears each time? Does the house feel empty for the rest of the day? Does he cry? Derek shakes the thought out of his head. Stiles is obviously happy with what they have. Derek knows that this is helping them, both of them, come to terms with his early death. It has to be worth it to put themselves through such a painful dance.

He takes it as proof when Stiles admits he’s finally thinking of selling the loft. Cora and Mike are getting married, he explains (Mike who? Derek wants to ask; he never got a last name. When Stiles first mentioned him, the guy had seemed like a fling).

“Obviously they’ll want to buy a place to start a pack of their own, and that means a down payment. It just makes sense,” Stiles says, shrugging. “And… It’s time to let it go, I think.”

“Yeah.” Derek’s making his own way towards acceptance, too. He’s almost used to Stiles growing in ways he can't anticipate, becoming so much more than he ever got the chance to be. It’s strange, but at the same time he’s also learned to trust that Stiles will grow but not away from Derek, even though the details of their time apart can never be fully filled in. Derek’s almost figured out the impossible trick of enjoying their time for what it is, and not what he wishes so much it was instead.

“Till next time,” Stiles finally says, gives him a sad smile and Derek...

 

...wakes up to an unfamiliar expression on Stiles’ face. His mouth is pinched, stress bringing out the lines on his face. Something about today has hit him hard, and he’s wrecked like he hasn’t been since the first few times Derek came back. His hair is disheveled and a little longer than he’s been keeping it the last few years. Derek opens his mouth to ask what the matter is, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“What's this.” There’s gold ring pinched in Stiles’ fingers, thrust forward into Derek’s face.

“Oh.” Derek blinks. “I didn’t think you’d go through my sock drawer.” Not now, and not back when he’d hid the thing.

“I went through everything,” Stiles whispers miserably. “This is a ring. A wedding ring. Like, for a proposal.”

No sense denying it. “Yeah.”

“When?” Stiles’ voice cracks. “When were you gonna ask?”

“I didn’t have a plan. I just thought… soon.” What a sorry non-answer. He should have proposed the second he’d gotten the ring home. Before then. Sometimes he feels like the sheer mass of everything they might have had could literally crush him.

“Fuck,” Stiles spits, driving the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I keep thinking I’m past the worst and then, fuck!” He sucks in a breath and shakes it off. “Okay. Okay, I’ll just… I’m gonna process that. Can I?” He barely waits for Derek’s hesitant nod before turning the hourglass and Derek…

 

….wakes, hoping for a better hour to spend, but this time Stiles is even worse. His face is tearstained and his expression raw. There’s a hollow look to his eyes that has Derek’s blood running cold.

“Stiles? What’s wrong?”

“My Dad,” Stiles says through too-quick breaths. “Dad died. He’s actually, Derek, I just found out like two hours ago, and he’s gone. It doesn’t feel real but at the same time it’s the only real thing? And I can’t even breathe, I just need you here, for a little while. I can’t handle this alone, it’s like everything I can think about just _hurts_.”

“Oh, Stiles,” Derek says, opening his arms.

Stiles collapses into him, wrapping his arms tight and clutching Derek to him. He sobs, a few deep wracking heaves, and slowly breaks into steadier, less wrenching tears. He sags into the embrace after a few moments, and then tenses again. “No, this is the stupidest… I can’t believe we're wasting your time like this.”

“No, hey, not wasting. Never,” Derek murmurs, giving him a squeeze. He can’t imagine leaving now, letting Stiles go through this alone.

But Stiles doesn’t accept the comfort. “Okay, fine, burning though, then. Using up.” He strains back against Derek’s hold, his voice ratcheting louder and higher. “Do you get that every moment I spend with you now is one I can't have later?” He pulls back enough that Derek can see his face crumple into an even more helpless expression. “I just want you back, _really_ back, Derek! I save up every moment that I want you all year, I pretend like you get my texts and you're listening... but you're not. You’re not here, you’re dead. Just like my Dad.” He takes a deep, shuddery breath. “There isn't anything after is there?”

Derek’s silence is enough of an answer.

Stiles wells up again. “I knew it, this is it. This is all we get. Shit, I didn't even start the timer…” he fumbles for his phone, fingers too trembly to manage.

“Forget about that,” Derek says firmly, gathering Stiles up. “Come here, shh.”

Derek kisses him on instinct; it still feels so natural for him, because in his lived experience of time it’s something he got to do all the time just a day ago. Stiles kisses back desperately, and Derek’s brain catches up. He hesitates for a fraction of a second without meaning to. He doesn’t actually care if there’s someone else, not if that person would let Stiles be alone at a moment like this. Derek kisses back harder, gripping Stiles around the ribs. But of course Stiles can read his smallest signal.

“No, of course I don't, it's just you,” Stiles says in a rush. “It’s always been you. Come on, please give me this, please don’t push me away. Derek, I need to just pretend like you’re actually back, for real. I don’t wanna always be thinking about in between.”

Derek wants exactly the same thing, to forget. He kisses Stiles again without any hesitation, and this time he only pulls away to tug off the one shirt that separates them. He pulls Stiles down into the bed he’d woken up in, diving into the physical act with abandon to balance the minefield that makes up their thoughts. For now, they’re both alive and they’re together.

Stiles responds with equal fervor, and all their shared experience lets them fall into a wordless dance of give and take, pleasure and response. Derek loses track of time, then even loses track of that loss. When he teases Stiles by edging him closer and closer without release, when he holds back on his own orgasm, it’s not even a matter of putting off the inevitable realization. Derek is only thinking that this is how they like to do it, when they have time.

The moment builds until it’s unavoidable, and when Derek comes it seems to go on forever. Stiles follows shortly, vocalizing the waves of his own orgasm. Then he flops off of Derek and lays back, half laughing. For a while, they managed it. They forgot this fucked-up fable of a situation they got themselves into, and acted as if they had all the time in the world. In these moments it actually did feel like Derek was back how Stiles wanted - for real, for good, actually alive.

But the delusion can’t go on forever, or even for ten more hours. Derek can see all the different emotions competing inside of Stiles; the weight of his dad’s death, pleasure at being with Derek, the resentful realization that Derek has to go. They lay pressed together in Stiles’ bed, in silence, willing the moment to draw out longer even as it goes sour.

“Do you want to be alone?” Derek fidgets with Stiles’ sheets. He’s worried about the time they’re spending in silence, and hates that he is.

Stiles ignores the question. “What's it going to be like the last time? The only way I'm getting through turning that goddamn thing over is knowing I get to see you again later. This was like, two hours. Two years less of seeing you.”

“We can space it out more. Or go shorter…?” Derek trails off weakly. Their hours already pass so quickly.

“Sure,” Stiles says darkly. “Guess time’s fucking up. Again.”

He reaches for the hourglass, but Derek stops his hand and holds him for another five minutes while he cries himself out.

“I’m sorry,” Derek whispers. He’s not even sure if he can, but he reaches out to the hourglass, feeling it’s strange weightlessness as he turns it and…

 

...Wakes up in a newer, larger apartment. Stiles is there, as always, constant along with the desiccated ache of resurrection. He’ll be thirty-seven, Derek calculates quickly. He seems to be doing better.

“How are you?” Derek blurts, eager to confirm it. He can’t quite get the image of how badly Stiles had been doing out of his head; it was moments ago, for him, even though he knows more time has passed in Stiles’ life.

Stiles gives him a wince of a smile. “Better. I’m sorry to bring you back for all that, last time. Can’t have been fun.”

“No, I’m glad I could be there for you,” Derek says. Suddenly he can't stand not knowing what’s happened to the rest of their friends. The idea of the sheriff gone seems unbelievable, and he can’t shake the horrifying idea that others might have passed on, too, before and yet after his own death. “How’s the pack doing?” he asks, breaking every unspoken rule he and Stiles have built up to keep themselves sane. “Is everyone else doing okay? Do they still live in Beacon Hills? Are they all still...?”

“Yeah, everyone’s alive. Nobody’s really in Beacon Hills proper ‘cept for me, but that’s just...Wait no, you wouldn’t know about Liam,” Stiles says, catching himself. “He died years back, between you and when I found the hourglass. Wendigo, very sudden. Mason took it hardest, of course, but there wasn’t anything he could have done.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” Stiles nods. “I wasn’t close to him but… It was a bad few years. Y’know, I always thought it couldn’t happen to us, back then, that we were too strong or too careful or I don’t know what.” He interrupts himself with a rueful laugh. “I think that’s partially why I took what happened to you as bad as I did, because it was such a shock. Now… I’m not that naive. Nobody chooses. It can happen any time, to anyone.” He gives a little shrug, shakes his head. “There are good things, too. It’s not some big downhill slide since you went. Kira’s doing amazing, she’s fully in control of her powers now and you wouldn’t peg her for a day over twenty. It’s crazy. Scott’s still head over heels for her, loving the vet work, doing some volunteering with the library in his free time. Oh, and Lydia’s looking like she might actually get that Fields Medal after all.”

“Yeah?” Derek tries to get his head around these breezy sentences being reality, not invented possibilities.

“Yeah,” Stiles confirms with a smile. In an even voice, he fills Derek in on all the ups and downs of their friends’ lives: the marriages (Scott and Kira), children (Lydia’s and Mason’s), one divorce (Jackson’s, from a man Derek never met) and so many other smaller things that only mean anything in the light of who they are.

When Derek tries to visualize everything Stiles describes, though, he comes up with flat pictures that have no weight behind them. However glad he is to officially know the fates of those he’d held most dear, he can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s all completely separate from him and the people he’d loved. He can’t see Lydia as anything but the brilliant twenty-five-year-old he’d known, can’t imagine Scott working a nine-to-five and going salt-and-pepper.

“So, we’re getting by,” Stiles says finally, summing up the long update and nodding to himself as if to agree with his own sense of the pack’s fate. “It’s been a long time since the last supernatural disaster, long enough we think the Nematon’s energy is actually fully dissipated. Things are good.”

It’s not a lie, but with Stiles’ honest assessment, Derek suddenly understands something that he never had before: He’s stuck in the moment that he’d died, no matter how they draw out his final hours. And, while he’s stuck, Stiles is too.

He sees in retrospect all the ways that Stiles is keeping himself half in the time that Derek had just died, how he’s always thinking of how to summarize his year for Derek, is always comparing everyone he meets to a version of Derek who’s been burnished by absence and yet appears yearly in the flesh to reopen the wound.

The realization feels sudden, but it’s been building since the moment he woke. Their meetings are an hour each for him, and have only just added up to enough time that Derek’s able to get his head around what they mean. But it’s been so long for Stiles in between those hours. So long wasted. Derek can’t deny what he needs to do.

“Well, that’s forty-five minutes,” Stiles says. “I actually thought we could call it now? If we only do that each time, it’ll gets us, well... longer.” He gives Derek a tight smile. He reaches for the hourglass, but Derek stops him, placing his hand heavily over Stiles’.

“What if we just burn it out?”

Stiles eyes snap to him, panicky wide. “What? Derek?”

Derek swallows, but he can’t back down and let Stiles keep living with his mind always chained to the impossible past. “I think you need to let go of this. Of me.”

“No, I don't want that,” Stiles says quickly. “Where’s this even coming from? You can't make me leave you, you’re the one who suggested doing this. You basically promised me you’d be here.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s right,” Derek insists, fighting his own desire to just agree. “I’m dead. Having this hourglass doesn’t change that. I can’t live a life, Stiles, I can just… linger. You still have time to live, only I'm in the way of you actually doing that. I thought we could cheat death and never have to say a real goodbye, but we do.”

Stiles is already shaking his head. “No, we do not. Not yet. It was my choice all along to do it this way, and I’m glad we got more time. _Get_ more time!”

“Okay, good,” Derek agrees steadily. “I’m glad. But this, what we have here? It’s not _enough.”_

Stiles’ face goes through a series of intense emotions, ending in bitter acceptance, the same weary hurt Derek feels. “Yeah. Okay. I get it, it’s weird I'm making you watch something you can't have. I should have just taken that day with you. This was selfish, I just...”

“No, Stiles, hey. This has been everything for me. Don’t apologize. It's okay for me. It’s not for you.” Derek runs his thumb gently down Stiles’ temple and cheek, taking in the surface changes and the ever-familiar structure underneath.

Regret and dismay war across Stiles’ face with a calmer emotion ultimately winning out: Relief. Derek understands, even as he hates it. A part of Stiles wanting him gone isn’t a lack of love. If anything it’s an excess of love between them that makes each time he comes back so painful. Who wouldn’t want to let go of that?

“How long do we have left now?” he asks.

“Ten or so hours, I think,” Stiles says quietly. “What do you wanna do?”

Derek’s first thought is how much he wishes he could see the pack, but they’re long past acceptance over him being gone; he doesn’t have the right to upend that for them. He shrugs. “Anything with you.”

Stiles smiles at that, though Derek had meant it honestly, not as flattery or any grand romantic statement. “Okay,” Stiles agrees easily, and leans in close. His hand falls almost tentatively on Derek’s cheek, his lips following equally gentle on his mouth. It’s a soft, slow kiss. A saying goodbye kind of kiss.

Stiles pulls back and they exchange a wordless, searching look. There’s nothing left to be said about it, Derek supposes. They’re agreed.

“Can we… Just one more time, okay?” Stiles says softly, half a question. “Not waiting a full year or anything, I just want to plan a few things.”

“Of course,” Derek agrees, excusing his weakness with a private promise that he absolutely won’t let it slip any farther afterwards. This next time will really and truly be the last, even though he knows it’ll never be enough. Stiles reaches for the artifact and Derek hugs his own chest until he...

 

...opens his eyes to a strange, beautiful room. He’s bewildered for a moment by the sheer elegance of the furniture and decor. He was expecting Stiles’ slightly cluttered apartment, which has always seemed nice enough, but this is something else entirely. While he realizes from looking that it must be a hotel, it smells only faintly floral, not like other people’s scents to even Derek’s sensitive nose.

Despite his confusion, there’s Stiles in his usual place at the foot of the bed, so Derek knows it must be right. “Where are we?”

“Go look,” Stiles says, his casual hands-in-pockets pose barely hiding his excitement as he tips his chin towards the window.

Derek goes to flip the curtains back, and gasps. The Eiffel Tower fills the view, absurdly close by. They’d talked about taking a vacation to Europe someday, always late at night and always in careful hypotheticals. They’d never really believed they’d have the time between supernatural disasters, not with the Nematon like it was. It had just been a nice dream that they might see all the old museums and architecture, and then Derek had died and all their future plans were over. Only now... Derek spins around, points, and manages to say, “Paris?”

“Paris,” Stiles confirms smugly. And, oh, Derek remembers how Stiles had teased him about his predictably romantic vacation ideas, half-seriously whining that it was boring and predictable. Yet here they are.

Derek grins, despite the thought that it’s ineffably sad knowing if this wasn’t his final day, they would have gone somewhere else. If it was just a normal, romantic trip they'd be in a place they’d negotiated and bartered over, one that Stiles found exciting and unusual but had enough history that he could promise Derek would like it too. And in fact Derek would have ended up loving it because no matter how he bitched about liking the predictable things he liked, he always loved experiencing the unexpected if it was with Stiles.

There’ll be nothing more in his life that’s unexpected, now, and that will have to be alright. Despite everything, despite him actually dying, they still get this perfect day to say goodbye. Just like Stiles had wanted so long ago. Derek goes to Stiles and kisses him softly. Paris is still Paris, and it’s beautiful.

“Here.” Stiles’ hands come out of his pockets and with a confident smirk he holds out a gold band that matches the one on his own finger - the one Derek had bought over a decade ago. “It’s our honeymoon.”

“What? Stiles, this is…” Derek automatically puts the ring on, his heart beating fast as he looks around again. He shakes his head; of course, with Stiles, there are always _something_ unexpected. “How did you even pay for all this?”

“I’m not a broke twenty-something anymore, Derek,” Stiles says, and his wry tone strikes Derek strangely. He realizes why after a beat; it’s because when he actually was twenty-something, Stiles would have announced that loudly and indignantly, ready to defend his assertion.

It comes into focus sharply: this version of Stiles isn’t quite the man Derek knew. He’s closer to forty than thirty, now, with grey blended into his brown hair. He’s well situated in his career, comfortable in his skin, a bit wearier but also more settled. “I’m not trashing my savings either,” Stiles continues, oblivious to Derek’s revelation. “I used my half of the money from when we sold the loft.” He grows reflective for a second, his gaze flicking into the middle distance. “Which I never could have spent on anything else, anyways.”

“What about the Prudential account? The life insurance?” Derek looks around in concern. There are deft touches of wealth everywhere his eyes land. “You’re not blowing everything I left you on this, right?”

Stiles laughs. “No, of course not. I have plans for the other money. For after,” he adds, with firm finality. His plans for the money are entirely his own, Derek understands. A small and private idea that will remain unshared, a tiny sign that Stiles is actually moving on.

“Good. I’m glad.” Derek bobs his head dutifully, and not entirely honestly. It’s what he wanted, but being excluded stings. “That’s good.”

Stiles has packed a whole wardrobe for him, a few pieces of his old clothing and more newly bought items in the current fashion. Derek dresses in silky slacks and a cashmere sweater, runs a comb through his hair, and stands for a moment, a little uncomfortable with the intensity of attention as Stiles admires the effect. Then Stiles offers his arm, and they’re off for their last day.

They walk down the Seine first, and then they go to the Louvre. Which is to say, Stiles hustles Derek into a quiet corner by the river, turns the hourglass, and then Derek wakes again in a handicapped stall inside the museum. Stiles is there, giggling and stage whispering for him to get dressed as he pulls the clothes Derek had been wearing from their backpack. Derek does dress, quickly, thinking of all the other times Stiles must have tidied up his clothes from the floor after they said goodbye. He’d never really thought of that, before.

He gets a kind of wild feeling as Stiles slaps the sticker ticket he’d gotten onto his chest. They leave the stall together, garnering a few weird looks and one double-take. Derek realizes that he’s grinning. He grabs Stiles’ hand and squeezes, because words aren’t enough.

They spend a long time walking down and up each hall, enjoying an unspoken agreement that Derek gets to have all the time he wants here. Painting after painting catches Derek’s eye, hyper-familiar classics and images he’s never seen before. It’s enough to make him giddy. Stiles seems quieter than usual, but Derek has no idea what to read into that. Or, frankly, if he should read anything at all. It might be that quiet is normal for this older Stiles.  

He throws his arm around Stiles’ shoulders just because he can. Stiles leans into him, and Derek revels in the weight of his head pressing briefly on his shoulder, there for a moment and then only an impression of weight and warmth.

“Hey, you about good?” Stiles winces a little when Derek glances over, like he’s sorry to have an opinion, but Derek’s relieved. There it is: that familiar thread of anxious energy, that insatiable desire for more.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

On the way out, Stiles stops by the bathroom again. He mutters under his breath about drinking too much coffee, and scowls at the wasted time. Derek shakes his head, smiling. It’s five minutes, he hardly minds. He enjoys the now-unfamiliar expansiveness of solitude while he waits. The crowd flows past him, so many different accents and outfits, skin colors and expressions. So many lives connecting however briefly with his. He follows a few girls’ pointed fingers to see what they’re photographing, and looks up at the statue of Winged Victory.

He’d glanced over on the way in, but this time he looks with a little more intent. The wide marble staircase is such a reverential place for a statue missing most of her limbs, Derek thinks. No head, no arms, a chipped and pock-marked surface. How had they looked at this statue, wrecked and broken amidst other ruins, abandoned by a people and sculptor long dead, and decided she belonged here? It would have been so easy for this hunk of stone to to crumble, forgotten, among the rest of her city.

But she’d been plucked out of the ruins. Cleaned and restored, and then displayed here with infinite care. Given this place of honor, for awed students to photograph and sketch.  She’s huge and solemn, almost epic in her austerity. Despite, or because of her missing appendages. The statue’s nothing like it was, but what does that matter? She is loved despite the damage and because of it: what could be salvaged is enough.

“Derek?”

“Yeah, coming.” Derek strides over to Stiles, grips his hand too tightly. 

Stiles looks at him strangely. “What’s up?”

Derek just shakes his head, because he’s found he can’t talk with the lump in his throat. Stiles sees the tears in his eyes and his expression softens. They just stand there in the hall, holding hands, acclimating to the day’s finality like easing into hot water.

After a whirlwind jaunt down the Champs Elysee, through the Arc De Triomphe and up the Eiffel Tower, each highlight neatly stitched together by the power of the hourglass, they sit down for the second meal of Derek’s afterlife. The restaurant is almost as fancy as the hotel, and Derek tries to convince himself that the price points seem as insane as they do because of inflation.

He’s still not hungry, but the food tastes very, very good. Stiles points out each odd or assessing look they garner; Derek must look like a trophy husband, by now, he says. They laugh about that. Derek is a little drunk, on the moment more than the exceptionally expensive wine. Everything feels blunted and manageable. Maybe this is all the heaven he gets, and it's enough.

Stiles turns the hourglass again in the restaurant’s bathroom, saving Derek the taxi ride home. It’s a nice trick. Derek wakes up in their bed, naked, and Stiles is already naked too. They have sex, slow and intense with the knowledge that it’s certainly their last time. Stiles falls asleep in Derek's arms afterwards, too wrung out to gather himself up and pick an ending point for the night.

Derek knows that Stiles would resent missing even a second of their precious time, that he should rouse him or turn the artifact himself, but he can’t bring himself to do it. It’s seductively sweet to pretend that this quiet moment of watching his lover sleep isn’t costing them anything. Even though he knows it is.

After a few stolen moments, Derek steels himself, turns the hourglass, and...

 

...wakes to a bright morning, with room service breakfast already waiting for them by the bed. They don’t talk about it while Stiles eats, but Derek can practically hear the last hours ticking by. There was so little sand left the night before. They must be almost done.

Stiles finally stops chasing the last strawberry around his plate and eats it as punctuation to the end of his latest anecdote. Derek smiles; Stiles has always been a good storyteller, or maybe anyone you love enough becomes this endlessly engaging. He thinks it’s the first one, though.

The immaculate duvet crinkles audibly in the silence between them now that the story is over. Stiles looks him in the eyes, then looks away as bites his lip, and Derek knows. This is really it.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says, though he’s not sure for what.

“It's ok,” Stiles says thickly. “I think... This is just the sad version, ok? There's a world where I fucking listen to you and I don’t come to that fight at all, and we bicker about it for ages, but you propose despite everything and we grow old the right way.

“And there's a version where I get bit that night, not Scott, and I listen to you about everything because I want to get in your pants, so Peter doesn't kill anyone, and none of that bad shit goes down at all. And there's a version where after the fire, you don't even go to New York. You see me at the police station and it’s love at first sight, and you stay, and you take me to prom and Laura tells you to put a ring on it and… and. This is the sad version of the story, is all. This is just the darkest fucking timeline.”

Derek laughs quietly at the characteristic switch in tone. “Yeah. Worst possible fucking way this could have gone, hands down.” How he longs for those other universes. Any of them.

Stiles’ brows knit for a second and he gives one sharp shake of his head. “No, you know what? That’s bullshit. The worst one is where I don’t find the hourglass.”

Derek feels his chin tremble even as he breaks into a smile. “Really? Even with everything, that time I yelled at you, all the goodbyes?”

“Yes,” Stiles says fervently. “Derek, yes.”

Their hands tighten their grasp, like holding on physically can prevent what’s coming, and Derek thinks his heart might just break and kill him before anything else can.

It doesn’t, but the artifact is there, unavoidable, the sand running through it fast as ever. Stiles untangles their fingers and picks it up. “How do you want to do this?” He shifts it back and forth in his broad palms, as if weighing it.

The only thing Derek wants is to not do it at all, but he settles for not knowing when it’s coming. He tips forward and kisses Stiles hard, eyes screwed shut, focused on that feeling and not the terror of dying before he...

 

...opens his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling in a medium-sized room. He’s laying on the floor for the first time, his sore back itching against the rough carpeting. It’s even more disorienting than usual, not having expected any further awakenings. There are sweatpants beside him that Stiles must have dropped there, and Derek puts them on as he stands. The one thick-paned window shows a forest view and no other house in sight. It seems almost rustic, after the bombastic Parisian hotel Derek had been in moments before.

However homey it looks, it smells like a hospital. At the center of the back wall is a mechanical cot with raised barriers on either side, an IV stand and a heart monitor. The characteristic sound has been turned off, but a green line draws jagged mountains. There’s an old man in the bed, only the old man is Stiles. He and Derek look at one another; no matter how different the place or how different Stiles is, what Derek feels is constant.

Stiles seems to have the same thought. “Fuck me, I forgot how hot you are,” he says through a wide grin. His voice is recognizable, but reedy and cracking. It’s jarring. Stiles must see Derek’s surprise, and shifts almost self-consciously. He grows serious. “Not sure how much time we have, actually. Only a few minutes, I think. It’s not much, but I had to keep at least a moment or two. Knowing I had a last chance to see you…well, It’s the only way I could do it, back then.”

Derek approaches the bed slowly. “Are you okay?” At a closer look, Stiles is frighteningly frail. Derek’s almost scared to touch him, and settles for a soft hand on his shoulder. “Shouldn't there be people with you, the pack?”

“God, there have been,” Stiles gripes, and he sounds like his old self. “Everyone was always underfoot, especially the kids. Tryin’t’do everything for me. For years! Since I was eighty!”

“Kids?” He had a family after all, Derek thinks with a pang.

Stiles brightens. “That’s right! Yeah, I was gonna... Here, come look.” He struggles mostly upright in his bed, and waves Derek over to the other side. There’s a photo book he’s gesturing to, and Derek takes it.

Inside is a shiny screen, not the mylar-covered pages he expected, but Derek was right that the book is for pictures. He swipes through them, and in each frame he sees kids. There are five of them, three girls and two boys, and in the pictures they’re hanging on Stiles or hiding behind Scott or proudly propped in front of Kira or on Isaac’s shoulders. There are other adults that Derek doesn’t recognize. As he pages though he sees the kids growing up, and new kids appear. Some of the newcomers are toddlers and and some are preteens who scowl in their first picture and relax each successive one until they’re grinning and beaming like the age they are. And their eyes, in the shots with a flash...

“Wait,” he says slowly. “Are they...?”

Stiles eyes sparkle mischievously. “Yeah. You’re not the only werewolf who needed a second family. And these kids, I found them and I gave it to them. What I wish somebody’d given you. Look at the first picture, you started in the middle, go back.”

Derek figures out how to reset the book to the first page, and a full spread photo loads. It’s the whole group, adults and original five kids, standing in front of a building that says,   _Derek Hale and Allison Argent’s Home for Unique Youths._

“The kids aren’t…” He was going to say _yours,_ but of course they are. He sees that in the pictures, the way they look at Stiles like Stiles used to look at the sheriff. “You weren’t married.”

“No, never,” Stiles says with knowing look in his eyes. “Oh, I had lovers. I was even in love a few times. I didn’t miss out, don’t make that martyr face at me. But I never…” He breaks off, a crease between his eyebrows that reveals genuine curiosity. “I don’t know if I was too scared to open up, or if I never met the right person, or if it was something else, but it was never like that again. Not like it was with us.”

Derek tries and fails to swallow the lump in his throat, a bittersweet warmth settling into his chest. “Okay.”

“Does the name bother you?” Stiles suddenly blurts, his upturned face childlike in the simplicity of his expression. “Your name right next to the Argents? Scott was an equal partner, I couldn’t have done it without him. We took in hunter kids, too, ones kicked out for not wanting to kill. It didn’t seem fair to leave Allison’s name off, but....”

“No,” Derek cuts him off gently. “It’s good. Perfect.” He can barely hold the wonder of it in his head: kids growing up knowing both sides of the world, without hate, making a better future. He blinks away tears, clears his throat. “How is he? Scott.”

“Oh. He went last fall.” Stiles’ head falls back onto his pillow, sadness wearying him. His expression is suddenly querulous. “I’m so old, and I’m sick of it. Of outlasting. I’ve already said my goodbyes, you know. They’ve come to terms. Everyone’s expecting this.”

Derek feels a spike of anxiety he does his best to hide. “Hey, now. You’re not giving up, are you?”

“Hah! I'm a hundred and two, Derek. I wouldn’ta even stayed this long if I wasn't making a point. Was planning on a hundred even, but the kids…” He broke off with a wistful smile. “Anyways, what I mean is that I’m done now, please and thanks. Medical miracles only go so far, even in this day and age.” He shifts again and winces.

Derek looks at him, really looks, and realizes that he’s in pain. With only a second of hesitation, he grasps Stiles’ thin arm and begins to take it.

Stiles lets out a long sigh, the breath easing out of him effortlessly. The inhales seem to cost him more. Derek looks at the black tracing up his own arm; there’s less of it than he’d thought. He looks back to Stiles’ face, age-spotted and sagging at the jowls but strangely familiar, like reality and memory are double-exposed in Derek’s vision. There’s a kind of wonder to dying at twenty nine, yet seeing Stiles live past a hundred. The wonder is edged with sorrow at how Stiles has wasted away and is laying on what Derek can almost admit to himself is a deathbed. But it’s wonder all the same.

Stiles’ eyes flicker open and he rouses himself upright with that childlike desperation again. “Derek, what I said, we never talked about it.”

“What? Hey, whatever it is, we don’t need to. It’s fine.” Derek’s all too aware that his own end might come at any second.

“No.” Stiles grips Derek’s forearm with all his meager strength. “Thank you.”

“For...?”

“For saving me. I know I said I wanted it to have been me who died, that you were selfish to go first, and I meant it at the time but… God, Derek, I was an idiot. This was better. Of course it was! Getting to have all these experiences, all this love...even without you. So, thank you. I can't quite believe it was worth the sacrifice, but I tried. I tried to have a good life.”

“You didn't have to,” Derek answers fiercely. “I wish I could have told you that sooner. Any life you led would have been good, to me. Because it was you. There’s nothing that you could have done that would have disappointed me.”

Stiles nods, looking out the window and smiling distantly. “A good life.”

“You did. You had a great life,” Derek says, and then adds in a poor imitation of Stiles’ favorite impression, “A great life you had.”

Stiles barks out a surprised, wheezy laugh, and Derek laughs, too, shocked with himself. He has no idea what to do with Stiles this earnest, and the joke just popped out. He never used humor to deflect before. God, he’s become so much of Stiles. And Stiles must be so much of him, even now, and Stiles’ kids must be so much of both of them.

Derek bends down and kisses him, overcome with emotion. It’s intimate though chaste, the unfamiliar thinness and dry skin of Stiles’ lips making Derek more gentle than he would have been. They part and Stiles smiles, starting to say something that probably would have made Derek laugh. But he loses the thread, and instead breaks into heaving coughs that crackle with an awful, phlegmy popping. He struggles to breathe even after the fit subsides. He ends up not saying anything at all.

Derek holds Stiles’ bony hand in both of his own as he takes as much of the pain as he can, heedless of his own comfort. He can tell from Stile’s pinched expression that it’s still bleeding through. He clenches his jaw and pulls harder, driven by the fierce determination that always comes to him with Stiles, the same determination that had propelled him into harm’s way that Tuesday so long ago.

Stiles sighs, finally having caught his breath, and seems at ease despite a disquieting rattle in his lungs that Derek can’t quite ignore.

“Doing okay there?” he asks softly. Stiles hums agreement and puts his hand on Derek’s, but it’s a soft, sleepy movement and it slides off instantly to rest on the sheets. Stiles’ pain recedes, which Derek thinks is a good thing until he realizes it’s not.

He isn’t breathing, Derek realizes after a breathless moment of his own. The thread of pain that he’s been pulling thins and stutters out like a trickle of water; slowing to drops and then ceasing entirely. Stiles is very quiet. Derek grabs Stiles’ thin wrist and looks for a pulse, but he already knows there isn’t one to find, anymore. The silent monitor reads out a long flat line. Stiles is dead.

Stiles is dead, and Derek isn’t.

“Stiles?” The name comes out pitchy with panic. “Hey, wait, Stiles… Stiles, come on.” There’s no response. He’s alone.

And what if he's back for a lifetime after all, but without Stiles? This is the pain that Stiles must have felt when Derek died: A pound of lead in his stomach, heart pumping acid, each breath a knife. It doesn’t matter how old Stiles was, his death still came too soon. Derek could never have prepared for it given twice as long. But in between moments, before the terror can grip him too closely, Derek is gone, too.  

In the empty room, a small hourglass sits on the table, all the sand pooled at the bottom.

 

* * *

 

Derek wakes up under the dappled light of branches lightly shushing against one another. The sickening jolt he’s gotten used to never comes. He’s standing on his own two feet as his mind swims upwards to full clarity and there’s no disorientation either, just the buttery calm of stretching awake after a long sleep because the morning sun’s gotten too bright in your eyes. Only it’s closer to mid-afternoon, he determines as he looks around at the forest around him. Everything is bathed in the warm glow of the golden hour. He’s fully dressed for once, his body sending him no message of soreness or nausea. Where is he?

There’s a path in front of him that meanders towards a field and then to a distant house that looks almost like his home before the fire. A warm breeze carries familiar summer smells of grass and fruit and wood to his nose, and layered between all of it is the unmistakable smell of pack and love. Derek can’t quite pick out words, but when he strains his ears he can make out the distant murmur of voices he knows. He’d been wrong; there is something after. This has to be, it must be…

But if it is, if he’s been animated into some perfected version of his youth where his family is alive and at peace and none of the suffering he’d experienced is real, if this is an idealized version of his old pack then what if this is eternity and there’s no...

“Stiles?” he says aloud, the thought so present he can’t help it.

Easy laughter bubbles up behind him, as if it had been waiting for this exact moment, trusting Derek’s question would come. Maybe Derek should have trusted that the reply would, too, after so many other awakenings.

A familiar weight hits him square in the back, two lithe arms wrapping around his shoulders as a voice breathes against his neck the eternal answer, “Derek.”  


**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you for the editing input and encouragement of:  
> [ Michicant ](https://michicant123.tumblr.com)  
> [ MadMadamM ](https://mad-madam-m.tumblr.com)  
> [ Bleep0bleep ](https://bleep0bleep.tumblr.com)
> 
> This is the last Sterek fic I plan to write, but you can check out my [Tumblr](https://troubleiwant.tumblr.com/) if you want.
> 
> Finally, if you enjoyed this fic or found it meaningful, please consider [ reblogging](https://troubleiwant.tumblr.com/post/185441367728/a-soft-epilogue-troubleiwant-teen-wolf-tv) it. After the first 24 hours, fics aren't very discoverable on AO3's chronological lists... and honestly folks tend not go looking for MCD. Word of mouth is probably the main way readers discover fic like this one!


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